Response: Now that schools have fully reopened, children are able to access their meals, free to those eligible, at school. Although the National Voucher Scheme is no longer in operation following the re-opening of schools on 8 March, schools are asked to continue to support eligible children that may be self-isolating due to Covid-19. They are encouraged to provide a food parcel, however they also have the option to purchase food vouchers locally where parcels are not practicable. The advantages of providing a food parcel or meal include: • the confidence that a nutritious and varied range of food is being provided in line with information published by the Lead Association for Catering in Education, and that meets the school food standards; • being able to quickly set up provision as many school caterers will have experience of delivering lunch parcels; • supporting safeguarding through the opportunity to maintain regular contact with vulnerable pupils and ensure they receive healthy nutritious food; • reducing the risk of food waste, which catering suppliers may have already purchased. The Department has been acutely conscious of the potential for losses to the wholesale food and catering sector during lockdown, especially where this has run alongside concurrent loss of income from the private sector hospitality industry. That is why we set up a supplier relief scheme which ran up until 5 March. This allowed schools to continue to cover supplier costs for free school meals and universal infant free school meals in order to maintain delivery of critical services where schools considered the suppliers to be at risk. Learning from the experience of shortfalls in quality of some lunch parcels, the Government has worked closely with the school food industry to explore the best possible arrangements where lunch parcels are needed in future. We have published guidance that parcels should: • contain food items rather than pre-prepared meals due to food safety considerations; • minimise the fridge and freezer space that schools and families will need to store foods; • contain items which parents can use to prepare healthy lunches for their child/ children across the week; • not rely on parents having additional ingredients at home to prepare meals; • not contain items restricted under the school food standards; • cater for pupils who have special dietary needs, for example, vegetarians, religious diets, or pupils who cannot eat certain ingredients due to an allergy or other medical condition - schools should ensure there are systems in place to avoid cross-contamination; • contain appropriate packaging sizes for household use, rather than wholesale sizesWe have also worked with LACA, the school food catering industry body, and Public Health England, to publish general principles for putting together a lunch parcel which will allow parents and carers to prepare simple and healthy lunches for their children at home across the week. To maintain standards, we continue to ask schools to work collaboratively with their school food suppliers to ensure high standards are in place. If the contract is held by a Multi Academy Trust or at Local Authority level, we ask that the school engage with the contract holder to ensure the contract expectations are upheld. We have also urged schools, academy trusts and councils to take robust action, including cancelling a contract where necessary. Throughout all national and local lockdown periods, the Department for Education has continued to provide the full extent of funding to schools to cover free school meals and universal infant free school meals. Their guidance continues to advise schools to make provision for those pupils eligible for FSM who are unable to attend due to Covid-19. Additionally, the Government has made significant further investment to deliver healthy food and enriching, engaging activities to disadvantaged and vulnerable children via the Holiday Activities and Food Programme (HAF). At a cost of £220m this unprecedented scheme will now be available to children in every local authority, covering Easter, Summer and Christmas in 2021. During the summer of 2020, Defra designed and administered, with support from MHCLG, a £63 million grant to Local Authorities. This grant was to enable Local Authorities to provide further support to families struggling to afford food and other essential items. Building on this grant, and alongside the HAF, the Covid-19 Winter Grant Scheme was introduced in November as a further package of support. This provided an additional £170 million for local authorities in England to support families with children and other vulnerable people with the cost of food and essential utilities. This grant has now been extended until June 2021, with an extra £40 million available. As part of the Winter Grant Scheme, £16 million was allocated to Defra to work with the food redistributor FareShare who worked with local charities across England to provide